


treat you just the same

by huphilpuffs



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Harry Potter AU, Hufflepuff Dan, Hufflepuff Phil, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Truth or Dare, mentioned Homophobia, sixth year
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 00:09:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14007840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huphilpuffs/pseuds/huphilpuffs
Summary: Daniel Howell was definitely not a Hufflepuff. Except that he was, and Phil was determined to befriend the boy with straightened hair who loved transfiguration and probably should have been sorted into Slytherin.





	treat you just the same

**Author's Note:**

> "I'll teach the lot, and treat them just the same." -Helga Hufflepuff
> 
> (trigger warning for internalized homophobia, mentions of homophobia, and brief mentions of food)

Daniel Howell was definitely not a Hufflepuff.

Well, he was. Phil had been there, still waiting to be sorted, though there was already a yellow and black striped tie around his neck, when the sorting hat had been placed atop Dan’s messy curls. He’d watched it hum in confusion, listened to its incomprehensible mumbles about the various houses.

He’d heard it yell Hufflepuff into the silence of the hall, listened to the cheers from the group of wizards and witches in yellow and black, watched Dan step down from the front of the room to take one of the empty seats.

The sorting ceremony had continued, and Phil had thought nothing of Daniel Howell until after the sorting hat had been placed on his head, yelled Hufflepuff yet again, and sent him barreling towards the seat next to the boy with curly brown hair.

Back at the front of the hall, the next girl in line was called onto stage and sorted into Ravenclaw, but Phil had stopped paying attention, had leaned in towards Dan.

“Hufflepuffs have a bad reputation, you know,” he said, “but I think it’s the best house.”

Dan had just huffed, turned away towards a third-year who was otherwise occupied in conversation.

There was a girl with blonde hair sitting across from Phil at the table, and her toes jammed into his shin to get his attention. “Don’t bother with him,” she said. “I’m pretty sure the hat should have put him in Slytherin.”

Phil frowned.

Dan, having heard the whole thing, had jammed his fork into a snack so loudly the older kids next to him’s conversations fell silent.

\---

They were in their sixth year, the sorting hat’s words but a distant memory lingering in the scarf around Phil’s neck and the tie Dan kept draped over his trunk but never wore. The eleven year old boy whose anger could have very well have been a bad day had grown into a teenager who still sat alone and refused to befriend the people with whom he’d shared a room for so many years.

People still said the sorting hat had been wrong. More than once, a student had approached the headmaster about it, questioning if the hat could be so utterly wrong as to put someone so distant and quiet and rude as Dan Howell into a house of kindness and loyalty.

Phil still tried to talk to him. Every day.

Dan never really did listen.

That day, Phil woke up to see Dan sitting on the edge of his bed, as usual. He avoided the common room, complained about the plants and the sunlight and how bright the shades of yellow were. Avoided the people there, too. There was a book spread across Dan’s lap, sunlight illuminating the pages from a nearby window, as he muttered quietly to himself.

“Transfiguration again?” asked Phil, voice barely more than a grumble. “It’s your favourite class, isn’t it?”

Dan kept staring at the pages, gaze locked on the words. Phil blinked the fatigue from his eyes, reached over to pick up his glasses so he could see more of the scene before him.

The room was silent. Dust floated through the air, painted the room with specks of shadows in sunlight. Dan’s cloak, which he hated almost as much as the bright yellow tie he never wore, hung from one of his bedposts. The book in his hands was, in fact, the book required by professor McGonagall for the sixth year NEWT in transfiguration.

But Dan wasn’t reading it.

He was crying.

Phil’s breath caught in his chest, the gasp echoing off the walls of the dormitory. It wasn’t strange to see a Hufflepuff cry, to see their emotions written so clearly across their face in stains of dried tears.

But Dan wasn’t an ordinary Hufflepuff.

It had been five years, and for all the time he spent frowning, Phil had never seen Dan _cry._

“Are you–”

“Shut up,” Dan hissed, slamming the book shut on his lap. He swiped at his cheeks quickly, tugged his cloak from the bedpost, threw it over his shoulders and drew the hood over his head. Probably so that Phil could no longer see eyes brimmed red and lips quivering with pain.

“Dan,” he breathed.

But Dan turned around, legs thrown over the opposite side of his bed so Phil couldn’t see more than the tension in his shoulders, the weight seeming to curve his spine.

“Fuck off,” said Dan. “Don’t you have some plants to tend to, Lester?”

\---

Phil did actually leave the dormitory.

For one, because he did actually have some plants to tend to.

And because the image of Dan Howell, the most emotionless person Phil had ever met, crying was so foreign that the shock had him willing to listen to whatever Dan had to say. So he’d thrown on his uniform, secured his tie around his neck and cloak over his shoulders, and darted down to the greenhouse where his herbology project remained in progress.

Dan’s image was vivid in his memory. The redness of his face, the rosy patch by his jaw he so desperately hated, the tears so heavy Phil was sure he saw one fall into the textbook he’d been holding. The shaking hands and desperate motions, the anger in his voice laced with such need to not be seen. The panic, the fear, all so raw.

His heart ached.

It was perhaps the most Hufflepuff Phil had ever seen Dan.

Perhaps the confirmation he needed for the feeling that had tugged in his chest since the day the sorting hat at placed them in the same house.

He blinked the image away.

In his distraction, he almost killed the gillyweed he’d been growing.

\---

In his second year, Phil had been one of the students to approach Professor Dumbledore about the sorting hat. He’d stared up at the headmaster, eyes wide and confused, thinking of the boy who had only recently learned to straighten his hair and did so messily every morning before class.

“But Professor,” he’d said, “how could the hat be right if someone is nothing like the house they were assigned to?”

Dumbledore had smiled down at him, soft and wise. “Well, Philip, the hat isn’t just about how one behaves,” he said. “It’s about what people value, and about who someone truly is.”

Phil had been confused at the time, too young to understand the whole concept of one’s true self versus the person they showed the world, too unwise to catch Dumbledore’s implications.

Dumbledore was wise enough to understand that.

“Is this about Mr. Howell, Phil?” he’d asked.

Phil’s response was a nod.

Dumbledore’s smile had remained. “Well,” he said, “did you ever wonder if Dan is only how he is because he’s struggling with something? I’ve found, in my lifetime, that hurt can make people behave harshly, no matter the truth in their heart.”

“What do you thinks hurting him, Professor?” he’d asked.

The response had been a shrug. “I don’t know,” said Dumbledore. “But no matter what it is, having a friend couldn’t hurt.”

\---

He and Dan didn’t have many classes together.

Dan was one to occupy himself with transfiguration and potions, alchemy and arithmancy. He made no secret of the fact that he found Phil’s interests in herbology, divination, and care of magical creatures to be rather silly. But they shared a class in charms and ancient runes and though Dan had glared when Phil had chosen his seat, they sat side by side in both.

That day Phil slid into his seat by Dan, eyes locked on the textbook already spread across his desk. His hands hovered at the edges of the page, eyes flitted between the words and the boy sitting next to him.

Dan was squirming in his seat, looking at Phil just as much. His fingers fumbled with his wand, and within seconds he had the tip of it jammed against Phil’s side.

“If you tell anyone about this morning, I swear I’ll–”

Phil slapped his hand away. “I won’t tell anyone,” he promised. “I wasn’t going to.”

Dan stared, dumbfounded.

“But, uh, if you need anyone to talk to, you can always talk to me,” he offered.

That had Dan glaring, scoffing, though Phil was certain his scowl wasn’t quite as deep as it often was.

\---

Given how little they’d spoken over the years, Phil knew quite a bit about Dan.

He knew that the other boy was muggle-born, went home every summer to parents who still weren’t quite sure what to make of his magical abilities and didn’t understand a word he said about Hogwarts. He knew his parents were still together and he had a little brother, also a muggle, and that his grandmother was the family member Dan was closest with.

Phil knew Dan’s habits and style. That he woke up every morning with curly hair, which he’d always hated, and used a spell to straighten it. And that it took him a while to perfect the spell, meaning he’d spent a few months with curls always poking out from beneath his fringe. That he found the cloak to resemble a robe that muggle girls wore, and hated it for that fact alone. That yellow was his least favourite colour, and black was his favourite. That he always hid to get changed and only showered when the washroom was otherwise empty.

He knew that transfiguration was his favourite class and herbology was his least favourite. And that he’d hated physical education at his muggle school.

He’d realized in their fourth year that Dan had as few friends in the muggle world as he did at Hogwarts.

And was starting to realize, in their sixth, that perhaps it was because Dan thought it should be that way.

\---

A week passed, then two, then three.

Phil’s gillyweed had received a high grade and Dan’s latest transfiguration project had kept him at the top of his class. Dan was no longer lingering in the dormitory in the mornings. Phil heard whispers that he’d started leaving the castle early to avoid other students.

Yet on the twenty-fifth day after Phil caught Dan crying, he was there again. Not hunched over a textbook, nor working on an essay, and his eyes weren’t brimmed red.

Phil’s glasses were already perched on his nose when Dan started squirming. He was, as usual, not wearing his cloak or his tie. His uniform was wrinkled as though he’d been fidgeting with it, and at his feet was a constantly changing _thing_ that turned into a quill, then a candle, then a toad as Phil watched it.

That was another thing Phil knew about Dan: he transfigured things when he was nervous.

“You okay?” he asked.

Dan stayed silent, turned the toad to chocolate, and then into a torn up piece of parchment.

“Dan?” He paused. “I thought you were avoiding me.”

“I was.”

Silence returned at that. Phil had enough time to drag himself from beneath his covers, make the bed with a few flicks of his wand, and return to sit atop the mattress before either spoke again. Dan had turned the parchment into a book, a branch, a kettle, and a sock.

“Can I help you with anything?”

Dan kept staring at the ground. The sock turned into a miniature broom, and then into a figurine of an owl. “Do you think the sorting hat was wrong?” he asked.

Phil, for the second time that month, found his mouth falling open. And within a second, Dan was on his feet, returned the figurine to its original form, the Hufflepuff scarf he never wore, and turned to leave.

“Forget I said anything.”

But Phil was on his feet, too, wand in hand to hold the dormitory door shut despite Dan’s grip on the handle. “Dan,” he said, though the other wizard refused to look at him. “I don’t think it was wrong.”

Dan’s shoulders tensed. Phil was sure that if he could see Dan’s face, the patch on his cheek would be flaming red, and his eyes would match.

“I think you’re scared that it was right.”

Phil dropped his wand.

Dan left in a rush.

\---

That first day, after they’d been assigned their beds and told all about the Hufflepuff common room, Dan had approached Phil in their dormitory. The other boys were still downstairs, discussing their first experiences with magic when they seven or eight.

“Earlier,” he’d said. “when you said that Hufflepuffs have a bad reputation, what did you mean?”

Phil had shrugged. “Just that we’re weak, quiet, meek, you know?” he’d responded. “Too emotional, stuff like that.”

He’d watched Dan’s face crumble. Watched him tug the tie he’d been given from around his neck. Watched him throw himself onto his bed and grumble something Phil couldn’t make out.

Phil was still certain that conversation was part of why Dan behaved so unlike a Hufflepuff.

\---

The next time he caught Dan crying, it was in the bathroom. He was wearing a black shirt he always wore to bed and pyjama bottoms he hated because they had yellow on them. His hair was curlier than it ever was in the morning, wet from a shower and sitting, uncombed, atop Dan’s head.

And he was staring at himself in the mirror.

Dan was staring so intently at his own face that Phil almost didn’t expect him to see the new reflection drifting into the mirror. But he did, brown eyes drifting between his face and Phil’s before settling on the sink between him and the wall.

“I didn’t always hate them,” he said.

Phil swallowed. “The curls?”

Dan nodded. “I used to think they were kind of cute, you know?” he asked.

Phil nodded this time, a lump forming in his throat again. Dan was still staring at the sink, but Phil was staring at Dan. At the curls falling over his forehead, his eyes gleaming with so much Phil couldn’t read, the soft rosiness spreading across his cheeks.

He knew too well.

He’d spent too many mornings staring at the Dan, before he’d straightened his hair, wishing he would leave it curly just for a day.

“Did you grow out of them?” he asked.

Dan shook his head. “A boy in my class one day said they looked–” he paused, a tear rolling down his cheek before he could wipe it away. “He said something that made me hate them.”

The response sprung to Phil’s mind in an instant, rolling around in his head, shifting words and intonations and desperately trying to sound like _less_ than it was. He bit his tongue to hold it back, but his feet drew him forward. The shower he’d been planning was forgotten, his intentions growing less apparent as his reflection grew larger in the mirror.

Dan turned to look at him, and Phil’s breath caught in his chest.

When he exhaled, it was in a rush of words spoken softly.

“Well, I think they’re pretty cute.”

Dan stared, for a moment, and another. A tear rolled down his cheek, he didn’t wipe it away.

And then, without a word, he rose his wand to his head, tapped a strand of hair, and Phil watched his fringe go straight.

\---

When they were little, Phil used to stare at Dan’s head, try to find the curls amongst spell-straightened hair. He would smile when one was in Dan’s fringe, wanted to reach out and play with the ones that sat at the back of his head. He wondered if curly hair would feel different between his fingers than his own, straight hair did.

Twelve years old, and he’d sat in herbology next to another Hufflepuff boy. That boy would ramble about a Ravenclaw girl he found pretty.

He talked a lot about how beautiful her long hair was.

And then he said he had a crush on her.

Phil wanted to talk about how cute Dan’s hair was, but he never said a word. Something told him Dan wouldn’t appreciate learning that the boy he refused to speak to spent far too many minutes thinking about the hair he hated.

\---

Dan’s hair was straight again the next day, but he got up and put on his cloak, only making a face for a moment before smoothing the fabric down over his sides. Phil’s glasses had been on for a while then, making it certain that Dan knew he was watching.

But that was made even more certain when Dan turned to him, eyes wide and vulnerable.

“Does it look okay?” he asked.

Phil didn’t expect the question. He didn’t think Dan cared what he thought, didn’t think it mattered to Dan how the cloak fell over his shoulders or his chest, or how the darkness of it made his frame look smaller than the square cut of his shirts did.

But if Dan needed the reassurance, Phil was happy to offer it.

“It looks great,” he said.

The smallest of smiles quirked at the corner of Dan’s lips.

\---

He wasn’t wearing the cloak anymore when the day ended, had it draped over his arm when they returned to the common room after their ancient runes lesson.

Phil nudged the fabric with his elbow. “Didn’t like it after all?”

“I, uh,” mumbled Dan, “did you really like it?”

Phil smiled at the uncertain waver in his voice, the genuine need to know he never would have attributed with Dan Howell only months ago. “I wouldn’t lie to you, Dan,” he said.

Dan’s steps stilled. Phil turned back, waited a second, then kept walking.

Dan was wearing the cloak again when he arrived at the common room.

\---

In their third year, the same blonde girl from their first day of school had approached Phil.

“You’re still trying to be friends with Howell?” she’d asked. Phil had spent the evening offering Dan help with his herbology homework, knowing too well that Dan was struggling more than anyone else in their class. “Don’t you think it’s sort of a lost cause?”

Phil had crossed his arms over his chest, shaking his head. “No one’s a lost cause.”

“But he keeps ignoring you,” she’d said.

“He might need a friend,” he’d responded.

The girl had turned to look at where Dan was dragging his wand across his history homework, the essay he’d written on a page of parchment. “I don’t think he wants friends, Phil.”

Phil had glanced at him, too. “Well, I’ll be here if he ever does.”

\---

They became friends.

It happened all at once, accidentally in the way that something you’ve always wanted can fall so easily into your lap. One day, Dan refused to speak to him, and the next they were sitting side by side, between their beds, on the dormitory floor as they did their ancient runes homework together. One day, Dan was threatening him, and the next he was whispering secrets into the silence between them.

Phil remembered Dumbledore’s words from his second year, the reminder that Dan may need a friend.

And he looked up from his homework, saw the small smile that curled at the corners of Dan’s mouth, and was glad he could give him that.

\---

Phil didn’t like initiating conversations. After all the years he spent trying to convince Dan to speak to him, he’d ceased his attempts at getting Dan to open up to him, left the questions hanging in his mind, laced in cobwebs of old transfiguration homework and current divination attempts.

Dan’s confiding in him was slow and tentative, a secret between them as brilliant as the sunlight that seemed to always fill the Hufflepuff common room. But it was fragile, cloaked in darkness to match the stripes of black on Phil’s tie, and Phil was never willing to risk it.

So he let it happen, in the slow stages it did.

The tears. The hair. The cloak.

The day they were doing homework and Dan mumbled that he liked the subjects he took because they were straightforward and made him feel smart, that he needed the validation of something others perceived to be advanced to remind him he was more than–

He never said more than what. He’d clamped his mouth shut and stared at Phil as though he expected to be pushed into opening up about secrets not yet ready to be told. Phil had merely smiled and said he only took divination because his grandma had been exceptional at it, and he wanted to see if the skill lingered in his blood.

And then there was the day that Dan again voiced his fear about the cloak, called it a robe, called it girly as though not every other boy in the school wore one daily. He said it with voice quivering and eyes locked on Phil’s as though he was begging Phil to understand.

He didn’t. Didn’t know how to.

That day, they walked the grounds together. Most people were watching the quidditch match, but Phil’s uncompetitive nature and Dan’s disinterest in sports had them following the paths that wound over the castle’s grounds. Dan was wearing his cloak again, though his hair was still perfectly straightened.

“You called me cute once,” he said. “Well, called my hair cute.”

Phil’s steps stuttered at the words, the curiosity laced within them. Dan turned to him. His eyes were as wide and vulnerable as the day Phil had first voiced the words, wishing he could reach up and pluck at the springy-looking strands on Dan’s head.

They’d both stopped walking by then. Phil stumbled his way off the path, heart racing, so he could drop onto the grass. Dan stared for a moment, before sitting next to him.

“It is,” said Phil.

A voice inside his head added _you are,_ but his mouth refused to form the words.

Dan stared. Waited. Looked away.

“Can I ask you something?” asked Dan.

Phil’s response was a nod.

“When you were younger, did you ever feel different from others?”

The question was sharp in his chest, implications so numerous Phil’s mind couldn’t unscramble them enough to find Dan’s genuine question. He never could, no matter how many conversations they had, figure out why Dan asked the things he did. What closure they were giving to his mind.

He shrugged at first. “I was a weird kid,” he said. “And a wizard. It’s hard not to feel different.”

“You’re still kinda weird,” said Dan. “But that’s not what I meant.”

Phil leaned back on the grass, stared up at the clouds, at how they swirled around the sun and cast shadows across the ground. His mother used to tell him to find pictures in them, told him that muggles often did it for fun. That day, with Dan sitting only feet away, his heart beating to the beat of loud muggle music in his chest, he saw unsteady swirls that seemed to match the pattern of his thoughts.

“What do you mean, then?”

Dan reached for his wand, turned a leaf into a flower, and then into a branch.

“Did you ever feel like something was wrong with you?”

Phil shrugged. “Doesn’t everyone, at some point?”

The branch turned into a rose, then into a prism like those Phil had seen in muggle shops when he was younger. He watched as Dan reached for it, glared at it for a second. He swallowed as though it was filled with implications, then held it up to the sun so a rainbow was cast across Phil’s hand.

“Not like this,” he said. Then, without missing a beat, “do you know that rainbows mean different things in the muggle world?”

Phil reached up, touched the colours on his hand, only for them to shine on his fingers instead. “They do?”

Dan nodded. “And people, they don’t like all of them.”

Phil stared for a moment, looked up at Dan to see that his cheeks were bright pink, his chest rising and falling heavily with every breath. “How could they not? Rainbows are beautiful.”

It was quiet for a moment. Dan’s hands were shaking. He dropped the prism and turned it back into a leaf, slightly different from the initial one, which was unusual for Dan.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled at last. “But, I’m still learning not to hate the one.”

\---

Phil’s father had been a Ravenclaw, and his brother was sorted into Gryffindor. But his mum, she was a Hufflepuff just like him. And after his first year at Hogwarts, she’d sat him down and asked if anyone had teased him for his house placement.

No one really had, but she made sure to reassure him anyway.

“You see, Philip,” she’d said, “being a Hufflepuff is far better than everyone else makes it seem. It’s about being good, and loyal, and hard-working.”

He’d nodded.

“But even more than that, it’s about staying to fight for what’s right, and it’s about accepting others.”

He cracked a smile at that. “I try to do that, mum,” he said.

She’d reached for him, wrapped him in her arms. “I know you do, Philip,” she’d said. “You always have. But I want you to remember it, because one day you might meet someone who needs it.”

\---

Phil’s last class of the day was muggle studies, one which often had Dan scoffing, mumbling about how muggles weren’t nearly as brilliant as wizards. Not because they lacked magic, he said, but because they lacked so many other things the wizarding world seemed to have learned.

He didn’t enrol in it expecting it to be particularly useful, but he found it fascinating. He enjoyed learning of the ways muggles got on without magic, of the technology they’d invented, the ideas they held. He liked knowing how similar their worlds could be.

He waited until class was over that day, until his fellow students were pouring from the doors to spend their afternoon free of the clutches of class, to approach professor Burbage. She was sitting at her desk, a bundle of essays written on parchment sitting before her, when he cleared his throat to get her attention.

“Yes, Mr. Lester?”

His hands were knotted together, toes wiggling with nerves in his shoes. His tie felt too tight around his neck, like it was trapping the words behind the lump that had formed there.

Did he even want to know? Did Dan want him to know?

“Phil?”

He bounced on his toes, swallowed thickly, ignored the ricochet of his heart against his ribs. “I, uh, can I ask you something? Unrelated to class?”

“About muggles?” He nodded. “Of course.”

His thumb traced patterns against the back of his hand, pressed hard against the bones he could feel there. When his eyes fell closed, he could picture the reflection of colour against his skin, the way Dan had stared at it so intently, the way his voice had wavered as he spoke of muggles, what they thought.

“A, uh, friend of mine said that rainbows mean different things to muggles,” he told professor Burbage. “What do they mean?”

The professor’s fingers coasted along the edges of parchment, her eyes alight with fascination and confusion alike. There was a small smile on her face that made Phil’s anxious squirming cease, a promise that it couldn’t be _that bad_ laced in the way her cheeks softened with joy. She liked her job, liked the muggles, liked curious students.

Phil had always rather liked professor Burbage.

“It depends,” she said. “To some, they represent hope. Muggles have a lot of spiritual beliefs, you see, and the rainbow is often featured in their religions as a message from the gods.”

Dan’s face lingering, glimmering in Phil’s mind. The uncertainty, the words he had spoken. Phil had taken enough muggle studies to know the basics of muggle religion, but his gut twisted with the knowledge that Dan had been referencing something else entirely.

His gaze had followed the rainbows with reverence, but the terrified kind that had him fleeing the meaning just as he painted Phil’s skin with it.

“Anything else?” he asked. “My friend said the muggles didn’t like some of them.”

Professor Burbage’s smile softened further, her hands falling from the assignments she’d be working on to reach across the desk, held open towards Phil almost like an invitation. To step into whatever knowledge she and Dan held, that would maybe ease the worry Phil could feel creasing his brow.

“In that case, Phil, your friend was probably talking about the rainbow’s link to homosexuality,” she said. He could feel her watching his face for any reaction. “The rainbow, it’s the main symbol for the gay pride movement.”

His throat was tight now, chest locked around a breath he couldn’t let out.

The beat of his heart pounded, ached with implication.

“Movement?” he choked.

“Yes,” said professor Burbage. “Muggles aren’t always quite as accepting as wizards. People are still fighting to be accepted in their world.”

\---

Dan lived in the muggle world. Phil pictured it sometimes, piecing together the things he’d heard others who lived in the muggle world say with what he’d learned in class to form a positively incorrect image of what it may be like. Cloakless, tieless Dan Howell living in a world of people who had no wands, no magic, who didn’t know the boy standing among them could turn a bird into a teacup with just a flick of his wrist and a mutter.

It usually went something like this:

Dan trying to straighten his hair using the muggle techniques he often complained about, throwing on a tshirt and jeans like those he’d brought to school in their third year. He ate cereal in a small kitchen for breakfast and played what others called video games, which were not magic but still featured images displayed on a screen, moving at the player’s will.

Whenever Phil pictured Dan outside Hogwarts, he was happier. Still abrasive, with few friends, dressed in all black as he wished he could, but _happier._

But he remembered the way Dan’s eyes had followed the prism’s rainbows. Heard professor Burbage’s words about needing acceptance echoing in his mind. An image flashed of Dan in a muggle world where his slight frame and general disposition earned him comments even more unpleasant than those often heard in the Hogwarts halls.

Imagined Dan needing the acceptance people fought for with rainbows.

His stomach lurched at the thought, his body falling forward as his toes snagged a step.

He sucked in a breath.

Could it be?

\---

Phil had been ten years old, one year from going to Hogwarts, when his brother came home from school for the holidays and announced that a boy in his class had been caught snogging another boy. There was no malice, no shock, a hint of gossip and enjoyment that Phil thought might linger heavily in the Gryffindor common room, if he ever got to see it.

Their mother had eyed Martyn, though. She’d smoothed down the cloak she’s just folded with her wand. Phil’s gaze had drifted between her stare and Martyn’s unbothered expression.

Then, she just said, “There’s nothing wrong with that, Martyn.” Her tone unreadable and heavy. Phil was sure it wasn’t meant to be understood by young ears.

Martyn, however, had understood, sitting straight up, spluttering about his words. “I know, mum,” he said. “It was just _funny_. Dumbledore caught them, you see? Instead of getting angry he told them he’d missed out on that when he was a boy.”

Their mum hummed, smiled. Martyn went back to playing with the pet toad he’d bought for himself. Phil had kept staring until he dropped the book he’d been holding and remembered it existed.

\---

Phil found Dan up in the astronomy tower that afternoon. He took the steps in doubles, pretending he hadn’t fallen just a little while ago, to find his friend sitting at one of the desks for a class he didn’t take, staring up through glass that had been bewitched to show constellations, even when the sky was bright, midday blue.

His footsteps echoed in the room as he approached, loud and heavy, forcing  him to feel the reverberation in his chest.

It played off the words he wished he could say. The _I know what rainbows mean_ and _are you gay_ and, desperately, _it’s okay, Dan,_ that swam in his mind, loud and vocal and held back only by the boundaries he’d forced himself to hold. Getting Dan to talk to him was difficult enough without Phil wedging himself into his private life, without any invitation to occupy it.

He sat at the table behind Dan, shaking hands still locked together, eyes downcast to keep him from trying to spot waves in Dan’s impeccably straight hair.

“I heard you stayed late after muggle studies,” said Dan.

Phil squeezed his eyes shut, swallowed the bubble of _I know_ and _I’m here for you_ and _me too_ that threatened to erupt. “I needed to ask about something.”

There was a flicker at the other end of the room, a flash of sparks that died before they hit the tower’s curved walls. “Was it about … what I said? Yesterday?”

Swallowing the words back burned. Phil distracted himself by digging his nail in his palm, leaving a series of crescent moons dug into his skin. “Dan–”

He heard the screech first, opened his eyes to see Dan on his feet, chair pushed back.

“Forget I said anything,” he ordered, voice cracking with desperation that had Phil forgetting his need to let Dan be, had his hand darting out to wrap tight around Dan’s wrist.

“Dan,” he said again, “it’s okay.”

There was a gust of wind, a tug at Phil’s fingers. He blinked, and the room was empty, Dan’s rushed footsteps down the stairs cutting painfully in his ears.

\---

Phil checked two books out of the library. One about muggles and gender, the other about muggles and sexuality. He shoved them under his bed where Dan wouldn’t go snooping and risk finding them, and left them there for one night, then two, then a third.

He watched Dan get ready for bed that third night. His hair was still straight, but would curl as he slept. His shirt was black and hung low around his neck, his pants a tad loose around his hips. Before closing the hangings, he stared back at Phil’s lip caught between his teeth and eyes gleaming with pain in the darkness.

Phil waited until after Dan had closed his bed hangings and probably fallen asleep before reaching beneath his own bed, drawing the leather-bound pages onto his lap. He used his wand to draw his bed hangings shut, and to cast a charm on them that would keep anyone from hearing the rustle of late night reading.

“Lumos,” he whispered.

The tip of his wand glowed golden, and he started to read.

\---

A few things Phil learned reading that night:

Muggles had many names for gay people, many that they spoke as derogatory terms to make them feel alienated. Things they used in the same tone as some wizards said mudblood, as they voiced reasons for heterosexual superiority and advocated for diminished rights for others.

They were very strict about clothing. Especially for boys. Dresses were for girls. All Phil could think of was the way Dan hated his cloak, the way it billowed openly over his legs, how insecurity lingered on his face, still, whenever he put it on.

Girls were pure and frilly and less intelligent—that’s how the book said people perceived them—and Phil thought of Dan’s affinity for the most difficult subjects, his constant need to prove himself.

Gay boys had a “look.” Phil thought of the curls Dan hated so much.

The rainbow flag was a symbol of homosexual muggle’s struggle for acceptance, like professor Burbage had said. And some people hated it, like Dan had said.

He wondered if Dan hated the rainbow.

Wondered if Dan hated it because he saw it in himself.

\---

Phil had been thirteen years old when he really, truly, knew he wasn’t straight.

His mum had always made sure he knew it was okay. His dad spoke highly of every gay wizard he’d ever met. Martyn continued to talk about them like any other person, any other couple, in teenage drama and gossip and light-hearted humor.

And Phil, he had sat on his bed over the holidays, Hufflepuff scarf wrapped around his neck even though he was still in his pyjamas, looked into the mirror and said for the first time:

“I’m not straight.”

And then, for good measure:

“I like boys.”

The smile had cracked across his face so wide and happy and relieved that he’d had to look away. Shaking hands had tangled in his shirt and blue-green eyes gleamed bright in the mirror and within his chest, bursts of joy sprung so viscerally they brought tears to his eyes.

He’d spent the first few months of that year fretting over it, wondering about it, eyeing the Hufflepuffs who judged him with a solid weight in his chest telling him he _liked_ what he was doing. Thirteen and he’d seen others fall into whirlwind relationships and have first kisses and had felt the first true tendrils of infatuation burn across his skin, tingle in his bloodstream.

His first real crush.

On a boy.

(That boy had been Dan Howell.)

\---

He’d never seen Dan look so lonely.

Not in six years of having practically no friends, not when he first returned to Hogwarts after the summer, not even when the bulk of judgement about his house had happened in their first few years. Phil had never seen the weight of being alone tug so sharply at Dan’s shoulders, droop at his eyes, drag so heavily in his footsteps.

Phil wondered, briefly, if it was because Dan missed him. And then pushed that thought to the back of his mind, reminding himself that it was Dan who was avoiding him.

But he felt the same sharp claw of loneliness at his own spine, as the days went on. He could feel the absence of friendship as he avoided the paths they’d walked the day Dan told him about the rainbows, sneaked halfway up to the astronomy tower only to panic and linger in the stairs instead.

It lasted a few more days. Then another week. And another few more days.

Until the day Dan shoved the dormitory door shut with his wand before Phil could leave. He watched the lock turn, turned to see the pained expression on Dan’s face.

“You weren’t supposed to–” he said.

Then he crumbled back, falling onto his bed.

\---

In their third year, Dan had cornered Phil in the halls between their history of magic and charms classes. He hadn’t been wearing his cloak, nor his tie, and his hair was shorter than it was years later, but just as straight. His eyes had been afire, and a few fellow Hufflepuffs walked by muttering about how it was such Slytherin behaviour.

Phil hadn’t minded all that much, though.

Dan had his wand jammed between Phil’s ribs, left it there and waited until the halls had cleared and they were certainly going to be late to professor Flitwick’s class. Then he’d pulled away, softened around the edges. His scowl faded to an insecure frown and his gaze fell to trace patterns on the floor.

Phil remembered thinking Dan had looked very much like a Hufflepuff, in that moment.

“Why do you talk to me?” asked Dan.

His response had started as a choke, his awareness of the weight in his chest coming to the forefront of his mind and bursting past his lips in a shaky exclamation of: “Because I like you?”

Dan had stomped off.

Phil had fallen back, rested his head against the brick wall behind him.

Holiday break when he was thirteen came just a few weeks later.

\---

He stared for a moment.

Dan was sitting at the edge of his bed, head buried in his hands, sniffling. Phil was sure if Dan dared to look up, he would see the same tear-filled, red-brimmed eyes that had started this unraveling of secrets and tentative friendship. His shoulders were too square and his back quivered with his cries and Phil felt the pain slice through his chest, catch in his breath, at the sight.

He loosened his tie so he could breathe easier, and walked over to drop onto the mattress next to Dan.

Phil’s hand fell onto Dan’s back, and movement rippled beneath his palm as the other tried to pull away.

“I’m sorry for prying,” he said at first. “I may have betrayed your trust, and that is unforgivable.”

Dan’s responding mumble sounded too much like _it’s forgivable,_ had hope welling, however feeble, in the gaps between Phil’s ribs.

“But, can I ask you something?”

Dan stiffened. “What?”

Tentative fingers followed the rungs of Dan’s spine. He noticed that Dan’s hair was still a little wavy, and wondered if it was intentional or the result of morning distractions. The cloak that too heavily resembled a dress was laid across Dan’s trunk, and the textbooks he used to prove himself were sat atop the silky fabric.

“Are you?” breathed Phil, pinching Dan’s sweatervest between his fingers to distract them both. “Are you, uh, a rainbow?”

Dan jerked beneath his touch. Though Phil couldn’t see his face, he could picture the path of a tear rolling down his cheek, falling to leave a spot of moisture on his trousers.

“I never wanted to be,” came Dan’s response.

\---

Phil skipped divination. Dan skipped potions.

Phil gave Dan space, returned to his own bed, propped himself up on pillows and waited.

Dan stared for a long time. Then lied down. Then stared some more.

The silence lingered for a long time.

It was still worth skipping class for.

\---

He waited for Dan to say something else for a long time. To clarify, to ask for help, to leave. But they laid there so long Dan had picked up his wand, breathed _lumos_ , and started drawing shapes in the air as though to amuse himself. Phil watched so intently that he eventually realized Dan was writing out the incantations they’d learned in charms classes over the years.

Dan still hadn’t said a word, so Phil did.

“You’re not the only one, you know?” he said. “The only … rainbow.”

The tip of Dan’s wand went dark, and it fell onto the mattress beside him, as silent as Dan remained for a few moments longer. “You can say it, you know,” he said. “Gay. Bent. A f–”

“Rainbows are prettier, though,” Phil pouted. He ignored the image that came to mind, tried not to think of what the prism’s colours would have looked like cast against Dan’s pale skin, in stark contrast to the darkness of the clothing he always wore.

“They’re also the most visual representation of a fight that only exists because muggles hate people like–”

_Me._ It hung in the air, heavy. Echoed in Phil’s head, too.

Dan sighed. “You might take muggle studies, Phil, but you don’t know that much about them.”

He felt the words more than he heard them, their implications pressing him down into the mattress because they were _true._ Dan had spent more than half his life surrounded by people who cared so much about who others loved they had movements of hatred and fought against giving people equal rights. He had lived in a world that made him scared to wear his own cloak, hate his curly hair, hate _himself._

And Phil lived in a world where one of the most well-renown wizards was rumoured to be gay without a hint of malice playing at people’s whispers.

“Okay,” he said. “Which do you prefer?”

Dan stared some more, eyes wide, mouth fallen open. “Bent,” he said after a moment. “It just means … not straight.”

“Okay then, Dan,” said Phil. “You’re not the only one who’s bent.”

If there was a spell that could steady one’s heartbeat, Phil would surely be casting it on himself right then. His hands clutched at his duvet so they didn’t quiver with nerves. Beads of sweat had formed beneath his fringe. He could feel the pressure of confession welling in his lungs, heavy on his tongue.

“Who else do you know who’s bent, Phil?” said Dan.

It was a scoff, unbelieving and rude. Very Slytherin, Phil supposed, if not for the fear and self-hatred layered behind it. If not for the gleam to Dan’s eyes that told Phil tears still welled in them.

He swallowed. The words stayed in his mouth, rolled around on his tongue to the beat of his heart. He spoke only one.

“Me.”

\---

Phil had only ever told three people he liked boys. He happened to be related to all three of them.

Martyn had caught him staring at a boy one day. He hadn’t said a word, at first, just winked and walked away. But that evening, their family owl had arrived at the Hufflepuff dormitory with an invitation to meet Martyn by professor Sprout's office. He’d crawled out of bed, clad in only a black shirt and bright yellow pyjama bottoms, and made his way towards the head of Hufflepuff’s office.

His brother had been smiling when he’d arrived. “I knew you had some Gryffindor bravery in you,” he said.

Professor Sprout’s door had plants hanging from either side of it, and Phil reached out to touched a flower bud, watch its petals bloom beneath his fingertips, instead of responding..

“So, can I ask?” Martyn had said. “You fancy blokes?”

Phil’s cheeks had burned as bright as the red sparks that so often shot out of people’s wands. “Is it a problem?” he said instead of answering.

Martyn had reached over, wrapped Phil securely in arms that somehow had the power to comfort as much as they did to wield swords with the same skill as a wand. “Of course it’s not,” he said. “That bloke you were staring at? He’s pretty cute, after all.”

(That had been Dan, too.)

His parents had found out shortly thereafter, together. Phil returned home for the summer, and Martyn winked at him often in the hallways of their house, grin happy and non-judgemental, whenever Phil mentioned any boy he went to school with.

Fourteen then, the knowledge secure in his chest, fear but a distant awareness that it kind of, sort of different from others, he’d said it at the dinner table.

“I like boys.”

His mum had smiled, rested her hand over his. “That’s lovely, Philip,” she’d said.

His dad had smiled, too, pouring another serving of dinner onto his plate as he said: “We love you.”

\---

Dan didn’t say anything.

He stood up, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Paced the dormitory for five minutes. Picked up his wand and transfigured a book into a plant with roots and leaves sticking out from all the wrong places. He straightened his cloak on his trunk and wrapped his tie around his bedpost. Unlocked the door and then locked it again.

And finally, _finally_ turned to Phil.

“This isn’t funny,” he hissed. “This isn’t– You don’t get to just be like _oh it’s fine I’m bent too_.”

It was mocking. Dan’s accent was too abhorrently “northern” and his hands waved around in the air like he did when he was angry about something, and he glared so intently it had Phil pushing himself off his own bed, marching around the room.

“I’m not _joking_ ,” he said. “You like boys, right?”

Dan’s eyes grew teary again. He’d stopped pacing, had transfigured his disgruntled plant into a single rose petal, and was waving his wand, duplicating it with every flick. “I–” he choked, wiped at his eyes with the sleeve of his uniform. “Yes.”

Phil reached for Dan’s wand first, stopped the incessant growth of his pile of rose petals as he tossed it onto the nearest bed. His other hand closed around Dan’s wrist, drew him closer,

“So do I,” he said. “I like them quite a lot, actually.”

That sheen of vulnerability that had grown so familiar in Dan’s eyes remained, until they fell shut and he was stepping forward.

Once. Twice.

Phil’s arms collapsed around him, held him close, as Dan sniffled into his collar. His fingers clenched at Phil’s cloak, and Phil’s traced patterns over the thick fabric of Dan’s sweater vest.

“It’s okay,” he whispered.

Dan sank deeper into his arms, almost like he believed him.

\---

When Phil was young and crushes were innocent, he used to imagine hugging Dan. He’d thought that maybe a hug could turn Dan into more of a Hufflepuff, that maybe it was friendship, affection, that Dan needed to understand the loyalty and hard-working nature of the Hufflepuff house.

He used to think his hands could cure a boy of sadness he wasn’t even sure existed.

And used to think that Dan’s body, skinnier but taller than his own, would fit so perfectly wedged against Phil’s chest, arms locked around his middle and face buried in his hair.

He never pictured it quite like that, not with tears and desperate clinging, confessions ringing in the air and friendship teetering on the edge, tempted by curiosity and desire more than any sense of dislike.

But he’d been right about one thing.

Dan did fit rather perfectly in his arms.

\---

Dan skipped arithmancy. Phil skipped muggle studies.

They didn’t speak. Didn’t bond over their mutual love of boys. Phil watched Dan wipe the tears from his cheeks, saw him frown at his own pile of rose petals.

There was one boy, Phil thought, that he liked far more than Dan seemed to.

They stepped around each other with ease. Dan turned one petal back into a textbook, and the others into a flower far more beautiful than the plant his haunted mind had produced earlier. Phil’s hands coasted along its stem, colours growing more vivid under his touch.

Dan still didn’t speak. Phil didn’t dare say a word.

He unlocked the door. Dan turned to glance at him.

“Wanna sneak into the dining hall and get some pudding?” he asked.

Phil smiled. “The kitchen is closer.”

And they left together.

\---

Dan didn’t talk about liking boys much after that. He would glance at Phil sometimes when crushes were mentioned, hand wrapped too tightly around his wand. One morning, Phil woke up to a prism sitting by his bed, sunlight cast through windows painting rainbows around the dormitory. Dan’s bed hangings were open, and one splash of colour fell over his cheek.

They sat side by side in the dining hall, walked around the Hogwarts grounds together. Phil caught one girl, a year below them, whispering about how Dan was finally acting like a Hufflepuff.

“But only for Phil,” she’d said. “It’s like he feels safe around him.”

“Hufflepuffs do that,” had said the Ravenclaw she’d been speaking to. “Maybe the sorting hat hadn’t been wrong after all.”

Phil still didn’t think it had been. It had been a fortnight since the day of desperate hugs in the dormitory and already he’d seen the way Dan changed with some of the weight lifted from his shoulders. He smiled more, genuine enough to have the dimple in his cheek showing. He didn’t straighten his hair before everyone else woke, or avoid the common room at all costs, or pretend his classmates didn’t exist.

That day, Dan was sitting across from Phil at lunch. He had sparks in his hair from an accident in charms class, and wasn’t rushing to make them disappear.

Phil remembered staring at himself in the mirror when he was thirteen. Remembered admitting he liked boys, the rush of euphoric release it had given him.

He wondered if Dan felt the same.

If by ceasing to pretend a part of him didn’t exist, Dan could finally acknowledge the rest of the world with a slightly less haunted disposition.

\---

“Why are you always so happy?” Dan had asked him once.

They’d been eleven, had only known each other for a week. Apparently it had been odd that even the shadow of professor Snape’s expectations hadn’t made Phil’s face crumble with fear, or focus, or sadness.

“What’s there to be upset about?” he’d responded.

Dan had glared. “A lot of things,” he’d said.

\---

He still cried sometimes. Or, well, rather often. Phil often found himself wondering if the release of emotions was new, or if Dan had merely been more desperate to hide it before. It had been another few days since the day Dan had come out—as Phil’s book about muggles and sexuality called it—to Phil, and he was standing in the bathroom, staring at his reflection once again.

His hair was curly, his fingers knotted in it.

“Do you still hate them?” asked Phil. He stared at their reflections, his face but a speck over Dan’s shoulder in the mirror.

“I’m trying not to,” said Dan. “But I just– How do I believe it’s okay?”

It was slow steps that drew Phil forward, unsteady knees and features weighed down by questions unspoken. The curls atop Dan’s head were dry that day, not fresh from a shower, but left untouched long enough to form ringlets over his brow and around his ears. Phil wondered how long he’d been standing there, staring, waiting.

“Having curly hair?” he asked this time, because it still made no sense to him, the associations Dan had in his head. “Why do you hate them, Dan?”

The other boy’s shoulders heaved with his breath. The neckline of his pyjama shirt, loose over his shoulders, fluttered over ribs so Phil can see peaks of his collarbones.

Phil had spent so long looking only from afar. Telling himself that Dan hated him. That Dan didn’t like boys.

Neither of those things were true. But still, Phil dragged his gaze upwards, stared at where soft spirals spun over Dan’s forehead.

“Muggles can be mean,” he said. “They learn insults far too young, without even knowing what they’re saying.”

Phil took another step forward, and another. His fingers twitched at his sides, itching to smoothe the tension from Dan’s spine with friendly touch layered in connotation—they were both bent, after all—that wasn’t, perhaps, entirely false. There was only an arm’s length between them. Phil let the distance remain.

“The summer before I came here, there was this boy,” said Dan. “He used to call me a queer all the time. I don’t think he knew what it meant, probably just heard some git say it all the time.”

“Did you know what it meant?” asked Phil.

Dan’s gaze fell. Phil watched a tear leave a trail down his cheek. “I did some research,” he said. “I was a kid. It wasn’t– I didn’t _know_ yet. But I think it seemed too–”

“Accurate?”

The response was a nod, another tear.

They were silent for a while. Dan had stepped closer to the mirror, his fingers curled tight around the edge of the vanity. Phil felt cursed, petrified, as he watched the emotion draining Dan’s features, the pain the lock of his knees, the twist of his hands.

“And your hair?” he whispered.

Dan laughed, a bitter, pained sound. “I told that boy I wasn’t a queer. I guess he knew what it meant by then, because he said ‘you’re about as straight as your hair, Howell.” He choked on his own name. Another tear fell onto the worn countertop beneath his hands. “So when I could, I–”

“Straightened it,” Phil finished for him. “So being as straight as your hair–”

“Meant I was straight.”

\---

He didn’t mean to do it. For a long while, he still felt petrified, stuck a few feet behind where Dan was standing, wishing desperately he could wipe away his tears, erase the pain written so clearly across his face.

And then Phil stepped forward, closed the distance between them. His shoulder brushed Dan’s. His hand lifted from his side to drift along Dan’s spine, catch the curls tickling the back of his neck.

“You’re not straight,” he whispered.

Dan’s response was a slight nod, eyes impossibly wide. He looked eleven again, with the sorting hat on his head and no idea what to expect.

“And, uh, you’re curly hair is pretty cute.”

Another tear rolled down Dan’s cheek at the words.

\---

Dan’s hair was still curly when they left for their morning classes the next day.

\---

“Howell, finally embracing the curls?”

“They look lovely, Dan.”

“You kinda look like a Hufflepuff now.”

“Personally, I think it looks better this way.”

\---

Dan skipped lunch. When they met up for ancient runes, it was straight again.

Phil smiled, though.

It was progress.

\---

At one point, in fifth year, Phil thought his kinda-sorta-definitely-a-crush on Daniel Howell was starting to fade. Maybe because the sight of him stopped making Phil’s breath hitch, or because part of him had started to think that the others were right and it was a hopeless cause to be Dan’s friend.

But he’d laid down at night and glanced at Dan’s bed and could breathe easy. His heart didn’t race like he did when he was twelve and pretending it was out for fear because Dan was rude. His hands didn’t shake like they did when he was thirteen and spending his free time wondering if he liked blokes. It wasn’t like when he was fourteen, and images of his fingers knotted in Dan’s hair and Dan’s lips slanted over his flashed behind closed eyelids as he slept.

Fifteen years old, and surely he’d outgrown his infatuation with the boy with straightened hair and hard eyes and a dimple he almost never let people see.

Except he was sixteen in sixth year. And Dan was lying beside him in the grass on the Hogwarts’ grounds. He’d left his hair halfway between curly and straight, and it reminded Phil of when he still hadn’t fully learned the spell he used to style it every morning. His hands were crossed over his stomach. His eyes shined bright.

When he talked about the constellations he watched from the astronomy tower, his lips split into a smile so brilliant, his dimple popped in his cheek.

Phil’s breath caught.

In sixth year, Phil knew for certain that his definite crush on Daniel Howell was stronger than ever.

\---

Phil figured that if most people knew about the secrets they’d shared, they’d assume that the two had bonded over a mutual love of boys and closeted sexuality. That it would be expected that they’d shared their experiences and preferences and talked about being bent more often than not.

That wasn’t the case.

They talked about school, a lot. Dan liked telling Phil all about potions and alchemy and transfiguration, and spent many hours correcting Phil’s apparently inaccurate muggle studies essays. Phil would roll onto his side, point out a teacher at random and ask Dan to make up a story about them. His favourite was the time they worked together to tell the story of the time professor Snape accidentally gave himself a love potion, and had been arrogant ever sense.

Sometimes, Dan would talk about his family, answer Phil’s inane and unnoteworthy questions about the muggle world, compare his childhood to the magical one Phil had with his own family.

They had more fun over games of Wizard Chess and Exploding Snap than they ever did talking about blokes.

Phil was always too scared to mention it, words caught on the tip of his tongue until he saw Dan smile or heard him laugh, and swallowed them easily, intent on never ruining Dan’s joy. And Dan wasn’t forthcoming about it, still seemed intent on pretending he wasn’t bent, most of the time.

But one day they sat side by side, hidden in an alcove of the castle. Dan’s head was resting against the bricks of the wall. Phil was twirling his wand between his fingers.

“Phil?” he said.

“Yeah?”

His breath was loud, heavy. “How did you know you were … bent?”

It took Phil a moment to first untangle the tightness in his chest before he could unscramble the memories of subtle crises and quiet contemplation. Of a younger version of him being a little too fond of how boys’ hands were rougher and their chests broader, how they made his heart lurch in a way girls didn’t, quite so often.

“I just knew,” he said. “It wasn’t- I didn’t have this huge moment.” His head lolled against the wall, gaze tripping over the furrow of Dan’s brow to his dipped chin. “I liked a boy. And other boys were pretty nice too. It was pretty easy after that.”

Dan didn’t say a word for a long moment. His eyes were gleaming. Phil wondered if there was a tear rolling down the cheek he couldn’t see. “How was it so easy for you?” he choked. “How?”

Phil’s fingers curled tight into a fist, rammed into his hip so he didn’t reach out and smooth his hand down the length of Dan’s thigh. “It was different,” he offered instead. “I- growing up, for me, I knew it was okay. I knew people who were … bent. I _knew_ I might like blokes one day, so when I did, I just had to admit to myself and move on.”

He didn’t mention that his moving on didn’t involve losing his feelings for the boy whose sometimes-curly hair and shy, dimpled smile had given him that realization in the first place. That years later, those feelings still bubbled in his chest and formed lumps in his throat.

Dan’s response was a nod, thoughtful and quiet. His hands were clenched in the fabric of his trousers, gripping tightly to his knees. Phil waited for him to say something, but all he heard was Dan’s thick swallow, the muffling of his inhales that were turning into sniffles, the stutter of his breath was he exhaled.

“How did you know?” he asked. Moments had passed and his chest ached from watching the ripple of emotion flickering across Dan’s features. His palms burned from how tightly his fists were clenched. “Maybe talking about it will help you accept it a little more?”

But Dan shook his head. Shoved himself up from the floor and ran, mumbling a goodbye that barely reached Phil’s ears.

He waited a second before following, lingering outside the boy’s lavatory, trying to ignore the way his heart shredded at the sound of Dan’s cries coming from inside.

\---

He didn’t ask again.

Dan still answered.

\---

“I always sorta knew.”

Phil blinked the fatigue from his eyes, flailing blindly for his glasses only for his hand to land on his wand instead. “ _Accio_ glasses,” he said, fatigue weighing on his tongue, and then “huh?”

“I always knew something was different with me,” said Dan. Phil had gotten his glasses onto his face, so he could see the way Dan was curled up on his side, head half-buried in his pillow. The rest of the dormitory was empty—Phil was oddly grateful that most Hufflepuffs seemed to rise with the sun. “When I was little, before I even knew you could be gay, I didn’t really fit in.”

Phil hummed, face falling back onto his pillow, the rim of his glasses digging into his cheeks. If Dan wanted to share something so personal with him when he was half asleep, he would indulge his mind’s incessant desire to stay that way. “What was different?”

“I don’t know. It just didn’t feel right,” he said. “I already told you the boys at school used to call me names. We were young, it wasn’t even relevant yet. I hated it.”

It must be the remnants of dreams that had Phil’s imagination swirling with shimmery images of himself as a boy. Unusual already, with fingertips capable of doing impossible things for no apparent reason, and a crowd of peers calling him things that, in the muggle world, were insults. He’d been a slightly different child, even in the wizarding world, and his mind tried to fill in the gaps of what muggles would have thought of him.

There was nothing pleasant of what his brain formulated, and his lungs ached on his exhale as he imagined Dan experiencing just that.

“When did you first question it?” said Phil. He blinked his eyes back open, noticed that Dan had curled in on himself a little more, knees pressed tightly to his chest.

The same shimmering dream images returned, offering an image of himself crawling onto the tiny bed behind Dan, wrapping his arms around the boy’s middle. How he could smoothe the tension from Dan’s shoulders, ease the tight lock of his arms and legs, wipe away the lingering self hatred Dan clung too with reminders of how good it could feel to let yourself just _be._

He wiped that away, closing his eyes again to keep Dan from fueling it.

“Just before I got my letter from Hogwarts,” said Dan. “And then, for a while, I figured this must be it, right? It explained a lot, but not everything.”

Phil hummed again, nodded. “And once you were here?”

“I didn’t think about it for a while. Wizards didn’t say anything, I had no reason to,” he said. “But then–”

His eyes cracked open. Dan was staring back at him, unfurled from himself just enough that Phil could see the unsteady rise and fall of his chest. He looked … terrified, desperate to stop the story there, and Phil was tempted to get up and let him, leave words unspoken until Dan’s voice didn’t crack at the mere attempt to speak them.

He didn’t, though.

“Then?” he said.

Dan’s knees were drawn tight to his chest again, face buried between them. “There was a boy,” came his answer. “And he wouldn’t leave me alone and I _hated_ it. I told myself it was annoying, for a long time, until eventually I had to admit that–” he paused, glanced back at Phil, cheeks wet with tears, and looked away again “–I liked him. Too much.”

Distantly, Phil wondered how long a _long time_ was, too aware that they were sixteen and Dan’s first crush could have been years ago, his words a secret so deep they were only starting to erupt from within him.

In the moment, though, he finally stood from his bed, and stepped towards Dan’s. His knees were weak with more than just the effects of sleep, his hands shaking when he reached out to rest a palm upon Dan’s shoulder. His voice was grated, low.

“There’s nothing wrong with that, Dan.”

His mum’s voice echoed the words in his mind, a memory he’d never been more thankful for.

“You’re allowed to like boys, however much you do.”

He squeezed Dan’s shoulder, waited until his sniffles had quieted, and left the dormitory.

\---

It took Phil two weeks to realize two things:

Dan’s major crush that eventually made him realize and admit he liked boys was on someone that wouldn’t him alone.

And that, to his knowledge, Phil was the only boy who had never left Dan alone.

It took him another five seconds after that to decide that he would never ask Dan about it, unless Dan mentioned it first.

\---

The Hufflepuff common room was often full of wholesome conversation and friendly banter that Phil was sure would make any Slytherin gag. It often seemed to make Dan do so, his presence lingering only a few moment among his peers before he slipped away to his bed with a mumble of _homework._

In the entirety of their budding friendship, he hadn’t tried to change that about Dan.

Dan was the one who tried to change it about himself.

They were walking through the common room when someone called out. Phil recognized her as a fifth year who often perched flowers atop her head. “Dan, you wanna join us for once? We’re playing a friendly game of truth or dare,” she said. “Phil’s gonna play, right?”

Phil was sure that would have made any Slytherin gag, too.

He nodded, because he usually did join, letting Dan write essays and practice his transfiguration skills in peace. But Dan’s hand found the sleeve of Phil’s cloaks instead, clutching as he swallowed, then spoke. “Uh, sure. I haven’t played that in years.”

His mouth fell open at the words, and the girl next to him tugged on his cloak, a giggle passing through her lips. There were a few mumbles about Dan being hexed, someone else suggested someone was imitating him with polyjuice potion.

“Even Phil’s surprised,” said a voice from the corner of the room.

Dan huffed. “I don’t tell Phil everything I do.”

“You tell him a lot more than the rest of us.”

\---

Phil knew more about Dan than most people.

He knew his morning routine and insecurities and the classes he took. He paid too much attention to the way Dan’s demeanor lit up when it rained, and how he appreciated the black was one of Hufflepuff’s colours, and that he far preferred cereal to any other breakfasts served at the school. He’d listened to Dan talk about the muggle world, his parents, his friends, his bullies.

And he knew Dan liked boys.

But he realized, curled up in bed that night, that he didn’t know all that much.

The curtains around his bed hadn’t yet been drawn closed. Dan had left his open for the night, as he was already curled up over the duvet, mouth open on quiet breaths, eyes closed. His charms book was spread open by his feet. Phil wondered how Dan had fallen asleep so openly without him realizing.

And how they’d spoken so often without Phil realizing how little he actually knew.

He stared at Dan, the steady rise and fall his chest, the soft lines of his features. Earlier that evening, he’d seen those lips spread into a smile that made his dimple pop. He’d watched Dan sweep his hair from his forehead, hide his laughter behind his palms. Watched him formulate carefully worded answers, and blush when he seemed to wish he could say or do something different.

“Who was your first kiss?” someone had asked.

Dan had gone bright red, head dipped. “Hasn’t happened, yet,” he’d muttered.

Phil had been blushing, too.

He tore his gaze away from Dan’s face, glanced instead at fingers splayed over his mattress, knees curled up towards his chest. He almost wanted to rise from his bed, drape Dan in the warmth of his duvet, close the drapes so no one else would see him that way.

If not for the fear of making Dan uncomfortable that shuddered down Phil’s spine, he would have.

Instead, he rolled onto his other side, burying his face in his pillow.

“ _Nox_ ,” he whispered, watching the room plunge into darkness.

\---

“Socializing is exhausting. How do people do it so much?”

Phil’s responding laugh came before he could think, had Dan’s eyes crinkling at the corners as he looked up from where his face was buried in his arms. His transfiguration textbook was laid out under him, his quill let aside, an ink blot dotting the _i_ of the last word he’d written.

“So, an introvert, then?” said Phil.

Dan grinned. “Was that not obvious?”

Not much was obvious with Dan, Phil figured. For years, he’d thought the other boy was rude and disinterested, and yet there Dan was, hunched over the library table with a smile gleaming bright in his eyes. He’d thought Dan had the confidence and disinterest in others associated with Slytherins, and then he’d found him crying, alone, in the boy’s restroom.

No, nothing was obvious with Dan, but Phil didn’t say as much.

“It was nice, to have you hanging out,” is what he did say.

Dan lifted his head from his textbook, reaching over to let his fingertips drift over the soft edges of his quill. “You think so?” he said, words a whisper.

Phil nodded. “You’re fun to hang out with,” he said. “I’m not here to copy your transfiguration homework, you know.”

“That’s just because you don’t take NEWT transfiguration.” said Dan. He reached over, poked the spine of Phil’s book, a teasing smile curling at the corners of his mouth. “You’re too busy with pseudo-magic like divination.”

“Hey! My grandma _mastered_ divination, I’ll have you know.”

He watched Dan’s teasing gaze soften at the words, even as his grin stayed crooked and doubtful. “Oh? And did she have any accurate prophecies, that you know of?”

Phil huffed. “That’s not how it works and you know it.”

Dan’s response was a shrug. His smile widened, and before he said a word, his finger was jammed below Phil’s ribs, his touch playful. “Guess I just don’t have the mind’s eye for it, huh? But you do?”

Phil was too busy trying not to choke on his own gasp to do more than just nod.

\---

Before Phil had left for Hogwarts, his family had thrown him a little party, like they’d done for Martyn before he first took the train to school for the first time. His aunts and uncles had come via portkey and floo, and his mother had waved her wand to decorate their house with banners and balloons. Phil had bounced on his toes, standing in the middle of the living room and thinking of the toy train he’d played with at Martyn’s party.

At that party, his grandma had drawn him aside, and, not for the first time, had explained their family’s great history with the art of divination. Her hands, wrinkled and calloused with age, had cradled Phil’s cheeks.

“My boy,” she’d said, “you’ll meet a young man who will have a large impact on your life.”

His eyes had snapped open just as hers had fallen shut, her mouth twisting around words as though they were looping themselves around her tongue and tumbling into the air without her knowledge.

“He will be an energetic warrior,” she’d said, “with a hasty personality, very quick to love or hate.”

And then she’d opened her eyes, patted his cheek. Her smile had been brilliant, even as Phil’s own heartbeat ricocheted against his ribs. Part of him had always had some doubts about divination—every wizard did, it often seemed—but his brain echoed the words to him until he swallowed them back and focused on the balloons spread about the room.

Most of them had been yellow. His being a Hufflepuff hadn’t surprised anybody.

“Don’t worry, Philip,” his grandma had said later that evening, when his gaze still tripped over her with concern. “Either I’m wrong, of you have someone brilliant to look forward to.”

\---

In his first year, he’d returned home for the Holidays to spend his time at a similar party. Tinsel hung around the house, and his family occupied every corner of every room. His grandad was telling Martyn stories about his days, long ago, in the Ravenclaw tower, and his grandma had drawn Phil aside before dinner had started.

“Make any friends at school, Philip?”

He’d smiled, head bobbing. Though the house was warm, his new Hufflepuff scarf had been wrapped around his neck. He’d told her about the girl he played exploding snap with, and the boy who’d helped him do his potions work, and the friend who liked herbology as much as he did.

And he’d told her about Dan.

“He’s not really a friend,” he’d said. “He’s not really anyone’s friend, but he seems nice.”

His grandma had smiled back at him. “Is he an energetic warrior?”

She’d asked, winked at him, and walked away before Phil could so much as process her question.

\---

The school’s halls were quiet when they left the library. Dan had his book wedged under his arm, and Phil hugged his to his chest, wand tucked between the pages. Dan’s smiled had faded with time, was lost by the time he’d rolled up his essay and closed it in his palm.

That was another thing Phil was learning about Dan: he got tired, and as he did, his joy fell away even if nothing had happened to make him sad.

Their footsteps seemed to echo off the castle’s stone walls. Phil wondered when silence with Dan had grown so and comfortable. How it could be so easy when his mind conjured images of them walking through the school hand in hand, or of kisses in empty corners like those in the stories Martyn used to bring home with him.

Even when his smile had fallen and his hair was straight, Phil still found himself thinking Dan looked quite cute.

They were halfway to the common room when Phil spoke.

“She did make an accurate prophecy, actually,” he said. “My grandma, I mean.”

Dan turned to him, one corner of his mouth upturned. A single dimple popped in his cheek. “I thought that wasn’t how it worked.”

He huffed. “You know what I mean.”

And Dan laughed, the soft, content kind that Phil was sure not many people got to hear. The kind that made him completely lose his train of thought, until they were passing the kitchen and heading towards the door and Dan spoke again.

“So, what was your grandma’s prophecy?”

Phil turned, stared. It would be easy to say, to pretend it was nothing and go in together listening to Dan lecturing him about how the prophecy was far too vague and that was exactly how they convinced people divination was true in the first place.

Easy to tell the story like it was something and go to sleep that night wondering if Dan knew who Phil thought the energetic warrior was.

What he did say was: “You’ll have to wait and see.”

And he listened to Dan ramble about how Phil not telling him was obvious evidence that he’d made up the whole thing.

\---

They stayed downstairs for another evening, another game of truth or dare. The others had given them one of the loveseats in the common room, where fading sunlight flitted over Dan’s head and made his hair, which was straight that day, gleam in subtle shades of gold. Phil’s hand was sitting in the dip of the cushions between them.

Dan’s fingers were there, too, far too close.

The game went along quietly. Hufflepuffs, Phil had long since learned, didn’t play very brutal party games. It was almost like a getting to know each other exercise, that they were still doing six years into school.

One boy dared another to eat as many cookies as he could in a minute.

That boy asked a girl what the work thing she’d ever been caught doing was. Dan scoffed when her response was that she’d stolen flowers from her neighbor’s garden.

That girl asked another girl what her guilty pleasure was.

And then that girl turned to Dan, a smile dancing across her lips. “Truth or dare, Howell?”

Dan shrugged. “Truth.”

Her smile widened. Phil watched the rosy patch at Dan’s jaw start to darken before she’d even spoken a word. Watched it flare a brilliant shade of red when she did ask.

“Do you have a crush on anyone?”

Phil had stared, expecting Dan’s face to go white, for him to shut down and run away, or to go cold and say _no_ with no room for arguing.

And his smile did fall. So did his gaze. To the few inches between their fingertips on the sofa.

“I, uh,” he mumbled, coughed, “yeah.”

Cheers erupted in the room. A boy sitting a few seats away mumbled about how Dan was definitely not a Slytherin, or he surely would have lied. Someone offered him a belated welcome to Hufflepuff.

And Phil stared at the side of his head, eyes wide and lips parted and heart threatening to beat out of his chest.

\---

He tossed and turned that night.

Remembered, too vividly, the flare of colour in Dan’s cheeks when he’d answered. The pointed not looking at anyone in the room. The staring at where their hands had almost been touching. The fact that he hadn’t dared look Phil in the eye for the rest of the evening.

They’d mumbled goodnights and turned to close themselves in their respective bed curtains too long again, and yet Phil was still staring aimlessly into the darkness.

He could ask.

It was the middle of the night and he could feel the words welling on the tip of his tongue, the desperate need to know that was burning between his ribs. Every illogical part of his brain itched to tear the curtains open, to find out who had made Dan’s face bloom such a brilliant shade.

But he stayed pinned to his mattress. Logic and fear clutching at him, holding him back.

Dan’s crush could be anyone. A Ravenclaw with as much passion for transfiguration as Dan had. A Gryffindor whose body was toned from years of playing Quidditch. A Slytherin who cloaked himself in darkness and accents of silver that Dan admired from afar.

A fellow Hufflepuff who cared too much about plants and refused to leave Dan alone.

There was a bubble of hope in Phil’s stomach.

He ignored it almost as uselessly as he’d been ignoring the nearby rustle of Dan’s bedsheets.

Dan tossed and turned that night, too.

\---

“Is it really not a big deal here?”

They were outside again, walking around the grounds as they so often did. Spring was warming into something starting to resemble summer, exams creeping up on their schedules. And yet Dan stood with him in the grass, face cast in blotchy shadows of trees, staring at the horizon.

His hair was curly that day.

“Being bent?” Dan nodded. “It’s really not.”

Another nod, a pause. “So if you got a boyfriend, what would people say?”

Phil swallowed against the hitch of his breath. Pointedly ignored the flashes of images in his mind of him and Dan holding hands, kissing, sitting too close together on shared sofas in the Hufflepuff common room.

“Don’t know,” he choked. “No one would be surprised that the skinny boy who loves plants likes boys.”

Dan stared, brows furrowed. It reminded Phil of how he watched the potions he brewed for class, focused and trying to learn and not quite sure what he was thinking. “What would your family say?”

He pictured that, too. “Martyn would tease me. Not– not because I was with a boy, just because he’s my big brother, you know?” he said. Dan was still staring at him, nodding slowly. “My mum would be happy for me. She’d pretty much consider y-” he choked, “them family from the beginning. My dad would be fine with it.”

Another nod. Two more steps forward, and then Dan stopped walking.

Sunlight flitted over his features. Eyelashes cast shadows over his cheeks. His curls gleamed golden more than his straight hair ever did.

“You okay?” asked Phil.

One corner of Dan’s mouth quirked up. “I wish I could be so sure,” he said. “My family, they wouldn’t, like, kick me out or anything.”

Phil hated that he even had to consider such a possibility. “But?”

“But they’d prefer I be with a girl,” he explained. His toes scuffed the grass, and he looked back up at Phil. “How do you think people here would react?”

Phil swallowed. “If you got a boyfriend?” Dan nodded. “I think they’d be surprised. You’re not exactly known for your social life. But they wouldn’t really care that it was a boy.”

“Really?”

Phil reached for him, his hand curling around Dan’s upper arm. He realized only then how little they’d actually touched since becoming friends. He felt himself smile, watched the smallest of grins curl at the corners of Dan’s lips in response.

“You’re safe here, Dan,” he said. “I promise.”

Dan’s smiled wided. His gaze fell to where Phil’s hand was still resting on his arm. Phil couldn't quite bring himself to pull away.

“Can I ask you something?”

Dan hummed his response.

“Do you, uh, want a boyfriend?”

Dan’s breath shuddered, Phil watched his smile go shy, He was still staring at where Phil’s hand rested on his arm, and reached over to press his palm to Phil’s knuckles.

“Do you?”

Phil forgot how to breathe.

\---

When Phil had been in his fifth year, Martyn had caught him staring a boy again.

His brother had been in his seventh year and caught up with his NEWTs most of the time. The rest of the time had been stolen by Martyn’s new girlfriend. But that didn’t keep them from running into each other in the halls. Right when Phil was leaning against the stone, watching Dan dip away from their charms class, cloak draped over his arm rather than around his shoulders.

Martyn had walked over to him, knocked their shoulders together.

“Still, huh?”

Phil had swallowed. “He’s—”

“Cute?” said Martyn. He was smiling.

Dan had disappeared around a corner, probably on his way to study. Their time had been mostly occupied by OWLs that year. Phil was still staring down the hall.

“And more,” he’d said.

“Does he like boys?” Martyn had asked.

Phil had shrugged. “Doubt it.”

Martyn had hummed. It sounded too loud in the school’s emptying, echoing halls. He’d pressed closer to Phil, friendly and supportive and present enough to make Phil realize how much he’d missed his brother when they were both so busy.

“If he did, would you want to date him?”

Phil had shrugged again.

“I don’t know.”

\---

He wanted to date Dan.

It was hardly a new revelation. The crush had lingered, warm and uncomfortably present in his chest for years. But Dan was sitting across from Phil at the library, head dipped and biting his lip in the way he so often did when he was concentrating. He’d left his hair curly that day and one strand flopped over his forehead and Phil’s fingers itched to brush it back.

His heart stuttered at the idea of how soft Dan’s curls would be under his palms.

And again at the image of desperate kisses with his hands tangled in Dan’s hair that came from that thought.

His divination textbook was laid out before him because Dan had insisted they start studying early. But the questions that lingered in his mind weren’t about smoke patterns or prophecies. There was a constant drawl of _who’s your crush?_ in his mind, and the pressure of _if I wanted you to be my boyfriend, would you say yes?_ against his ribs and the inability to ignore it all flushing his cheeks red.

Dan looked up from his own textbook, offered a smile.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked.

And Phil’s response wasn’t some intrusive question that pushed the boundaries of their friendship too far. Wasn’t a demand for information he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

It was a blurt of words he hadn’t even known he was thinking.

“You’re a knight of wands.”

And a rush of blood to his cheeks so severe he could feel his skin burning.

Dan’s brows just furrowed, and he choked out an oblivious laugh.

\---

Some days Dan came out of potions class with colourful sparks on his robes and a frown drawing at his lips, and Phil would need to press his lips together to keep from laughing. Sometimes, strands of hair would have been pushed out of place by what Phil supposed was an explosion. Occasionally, his hands would be tinted some unnatural colour.

Other days he came out with head held high and a smile on his face that had Phil acutely aware of how happy it made him to see Dan proud of himself.

That day was one of the happy days.

“Successful potion?”

Dan shrugged. “An interesting class.”

Phil had never cared much for potions. The precision of counting stirs and angling them just right had always been more tedious than pleasant. But he hummed. “What’d you talk about?”

“Love potions.”

Laughter bubbled in Phil’s chest at that. Dan’s cheeks were going rosy, his smile fading to something softer. “Did someone drug you with one?” he asked. “Or maybe you’re planning on drugging that crush of yours with one?”

“I am not!” Dan squeaked. Actually squeaked.

Phil tried to stop the warmth flooding his chest. “Then what has you so … smiley?”

Dan’s cheeks turned pinker. He looked back at his feet. “Have you ever smelled Amortentia?”

Phil shook his head. “Is that the one that smells different for every person?”

Dan nodded, didn’t say another word.

They were almost back at the Hufflepuff common room when Phil’s curiosity fell from his lips. “What did it smell like for you?”

Dan stopped walking. He leaned against the wall, stared at Phil for a few moments too long. When he spoke, it was a shaky whisper.

“Beachwood, the Hogwarts grounds, and a mixture of soil and plants.”

The red patch by his jaw was so bright Phil thought it might start glowing.

And Phil’s heart was beating so fast he thought it might burst out of his chest.

\---

That weekend the Hufflepuff game of choice wasn’t truth or dare. It was never had I ever.

Phil was certain if Slytherins were to witness the questions being asked, it would be marked with laughter. They sipped juice someone had stolen from the kitchen and played with people of all ages. The first thing someone said was “never have I ever cheated on a test,” and less than half the room had to drink.

Dan was one of them.

So was Phil.

It went around like that. Phil had grown accustomed to sitting on his and Dan’s designated sofa, playing silly party games that resulted in nothing but a little bit of fun. The juice was sweet and the night was growing dark and a few first years fell asleep on throw pillows that had been thrown to the ground.

Too many turns in, a third year boy with blond hair and freckles had grinned over the rim of his glass.

“Never had I ever had a crush on a boy.”

Phil’s breath caught. His gaze cut to Dan. It was a silly game, an easy place to lie. One missing sip of juice would be forgotten by morning. And yet he watched as Dan lifted his glass from where it had been resting on his thigh, brought it to his lips.

He took a sip.

It took a splash of sweetness on Phil’s tongue for him to realize he was drinking, too.

A gasp sounded in the room. A giggle from one corner reached Phil’s ears. Dan’s head was dipped, so he was staring at the swirl of orange in his cup.

Someone who sounded like they may be in their second or third year shouted: “Love you guys!”

Someone Phil recognized as a seventh year said: “I bet it’s on each other.”

Dan’s cheeks were a brilliant shade of red that Phil thought his were matching. He took another sip of his drink just to occupy his hands, and waiting for the next person to go. And another person. And another. And Dan reached out to the dip between the cushions where Phil’s fingers always rested.

And took Phil’s hand. And squeezed it.

Phil just about choked on the sip he was swallowing because, yes, he had at too many points imagined himself kissing a friend.

Dan took a drink for that one, too.

\---

The summer air was growing too warm for robes to be comfortable, the spring breezes fading into something more subtle. Phil was lying in the grass in the shade of a tree so big he was sure it had been there for a hundred years, watching how the wind made the blotches of sunlight on Dan’s face shift with the leaves above.

They had exams to study for, but somewhere it had become tradition to travel the school grounds where most other students were occupied at the Quidditch pitch. And Phil would always prefer staring at Dan over reading repetitive spiels from textbooks he’s already dedicated too much time to.

“Can I ask you something?”

For long minutes, whistling wind had been the only sound to cut through the silence. But Dan’s voice was as shaky as the leaves that rustled overhead.

Phil hummed. “Sure.”

Dan lifted from where he’d been lying in the grass, pressed his back to the tree trunk. His knees were drawn up too close to his chest, and his fingers plucked at blades of grass one by one. “Do you have a crush on anyone?”

The leaves rustled. In the distance, Phil could hear cheers sounding from the Quidditch pitch. He wondered if, from nearby, they would rival the sound of his heartbeat suddenly pounding in his ears.

He swallowed, plucked at a blade of grass just as Dan did. “I, uh, yeah.”

Dan nodded. Sunlight gleamed in golden patches on the back of his head. “On who?”

Phil stared, then. He thought of curly hair and bathroom tears and the smell of soil and plants. Of the way rainbows had painted colour across his hand under that same tree not too long ago. Of crying confession and rosy cheeks and way Dan had so tentatively held his hand.

He plucked at another blade of grass. Blinked the memories. Smiled.

“Are you sure you want to know?”

He wondered if Dan knew he meant: _are you ready to know?_

Dan smiled back at him, the crooked kind that made one dipple pop while the other stayed hidden. “Not yet,” he said. He reached over, brushed his fingertips along the back of Phil’s hand. “But soon?”

Phil couldn’t stop the gleeful chuckle that fell from his lips. “Yeah,” he said, “soon.”

\---

His first year at Hogwarts had been one of the most eventful years of Phil’s life. He'd learned spells for the first time and been sorted and made friends with new wizards he'd never met before. He'd ridden the Hogwarts Express to school, and ended the year riding it back.

The train had rattled under his body. His bag was sitting on the seat next to him because his compartment was empty and he couldn't be bothered to shove it on the overhead racks. He stared out the window and watched England rush by.

He was only a few minutes into the trip back to London when the door to his compartment slid open.

Dan had stood in the doorway.

His hair had been curly, because he hadn't yet learned the spell to straighten it. He was wearing muggle jeans and a t shirt Phil had never seen before. Phil had thought that he looked perfectly prepared to re-immerse himself in a world independent of everything he'd learned that year.

"This seat taken?"

Phil shook his head. He had a few casual friends, but spending the train ride in silence was comfortable. It was safe.

Dan wasn't quite so safe, but Phil didn't mind when he slid onto the opposite bench. He, too, left his bag on the seat.

They'd sat in silence for a long time. Phil watched endless expanses of green disappear in blurs, wondered how fast the train was going. Dan had watched, too, forehead pressed to the window and arms crossed over his stomach, a frown drawing at his face.

"Did you have a good year?" Phil had asked.

Dan had huffed. "I guess," he'd said. "This magic stuff is pretty cool."

Phil had smiled. "It is." Paused, and said: "Mum says next year I can get my own owl. I want o get a small one, I think. They're cute.”

Dan had nodded. "My parents are muggles," he'd said.

Phil had noted the furrow of his brows. His arms had tightened around his midsection. He looked, suddenly, less ready to go back home.

They didn't say another word. The green of England's countryside faded into the tracks that went through London, and into the tunnels that led to the train station. It jerked to a stop beneath him, still rattling.

Dan had reached for his bag in an instant. He was halfway out the compartment when Phil spoke.

"I'll see you soon?"

A ghost of a smile had flitted across Dan's face. "Yeah," he'd said. "I'll see you soon, Phil."

\---

"What's the muggle world like?" Phil asked.

Exams were fast approaching. They'd be going home soon, to different worlds with different customs. Dan would hide his magic, surrounded by people who didn't know he had it. Phil would tuck his wand into his bedside drawer and watch his parents use the type of mundane spells they learned in their first few years of Charms classes.

Dan was half-lying on his bed. His textbooks were piled up at the foot of his bed, his hands tucked beneath his head. His hair was curly.

"A lot less magical."

Phil's responding laugh bubbled from his chest. "Of course it is," he said. "But like, what do you for fun?"

Dan turned on his pillow. His smile was so slight Phil could only see it in his eyes. "Lock myself in my bedroom and play old video games?"

"What's a video game?"

Dan laughed then. He curled onto his side, pressed his face into the crook of his elbow. "It's like, moving pictures on a screen. But you control it with, well, a controller. They're really fun," he said. "Wizards really need to adopt more technology. It can be really useful, you know."

"Yeah?"

Dan hummed. His cheeks were going rosy again, his smile widening. Phil wondered what was going on in his mind. "You should come down south sometime this summer," he said. He wasn't looking at Phil anymore. "I can show you how good I am at them."

"And laugh at how bad I am?"

Dan looked back at him, his smile so wide both his dimples were visible. "Of course."

\---

After they'd dedicated some time to studying, and more to discussing various differences between the wizarding world and the muggle world, Dan had lifted himself from his bed and stepped over to Phil's.

He sat, first, at the very foot of the bed, tentative and shy and staring at his knees. Dan's duvet was always turned over so the black side was up. Phil's was bright yellow, and the sun reflected from it to paint Dan's skin with streaks of warmth.

"Hi," Phil said.

Dan's eyes crinkled. "Hi."

He waited a few minutes, and then drew closer. Phil had shifted so he was lying on the edge of his mattress, and Dan had drawn back so his feet were tucked until his legs and his knee pressed against Phil's hip. His arms were crossed over his stomach.

He looked less scared than he used to, when he was young and confused and faced with a new world where everything was different and he hadn't quite let himself fit in. Less like he was shielding himself from attacks he wouldn't face, and more like he wasn't quite sure what to do with himself.

Or if he was ready to do what he wanted.

"You okay?" Phil asked.

His breathing was growing quick and he could feel his heart rate rising. Dan's knee was warm against his side. He was so close that Phil could reach out and smooth a hand along his thigh, press his fingers to the fabric of his shirt, pull him even closer.

Dan was in his _bed._

And moving again. He nodded, and lifted himself to move even closer to Phil. But he didn't sit. He let his weight fall until his head occupied the free half of Phil's pillow and his legs were stretched out so that, with the smallest of movements, Phil could brush their toes against each other.

"I don't really want to go back," he said. "I don't feel like myself there anymore."

Phil willed his heart to stop doing somersaults. "How so?"

Dan smiled, but it looked sad. Phil wanted to reach out and tuck a stray curl behind his ears.

"I thought I was a muggle for eleven years and yet, this feels so much more like me, Phil," he said. "I know you can't do magic over break either, but it's not the same. You don't go home to old friends who think you go to some pretentious boarding school and have no idea that you can transfigure things or make potions or that ancient runes are legible."

He paused, tried to shrug against the mattress.

"I don't get to casually admit I have a crush on a boy there," he said. "There's no one like you. Not in my life." Another pause. "You're not there."

Phil reached out then, found Dan's hand on the mattress and tangled their fingers.

"You were fine without me every summer."

Dan shook his head. "I missed you," he said. "I didn't want to but, I don't know, it's weird going from having someone try to talk to you all the time, even if you never respond, to being so alone."

Phil's mouth went dry at the thought. He squeezed Dan's hand.

"I'll floo down. My parents like the South. They wouldn't mind and we can-" He swallowed, squeezed Dan's hand again, didn't loosen his grip. "You won't have to be alone, okay?"

Dan didn't say a word, but he was smiling and his eyes were so warm and happy that Phil was certain he didn't need to.

\---

The next day when they studied, Phil lugged his herbology textbook over to Dan's bed and sat next to him the whole time.

The day after that, they'd laid side by side and quizzed each other on subjects only one of them knew anything about. Dan laughed so much at Phil's potions questions that tears welled in his eyes. Phil made sure to inform Dan that he should never touch a plant because he might accidentally get himself killed.

His tone had, perhaps, been a little too serious when he told Dan he really didn't want him to get himself killed.

The day after that, they'd held hands again over the duvet.

And the day after that, Dan muttered "Can I?" under his breath. Phil nodded without knowing for sure what Dan was asking for, only to stop breathing when Dan untangled their fingers and smoothed his hand over Phil's stomach.

There was a moment where Dan didn't move and Phil's heart had certainly stopped beating. And then Dan drew himself closer with his hand curled around Phil's waist, pressed his chest to Phil's side and his face to the crook of his shoulder.

"Is this okay?" he'd asked.

His curls were tickling under Phil's chin.

_Dan's curls were tickling under his chin._

"It's okay," he choked out, and draped his arm over Dan's back because it felt right to hold him just as tightly as Dan was holding him.

\---

They played another game of truth or dare.

Pressed together on the sofa with hands tangled and _soon_ echoing too loudly in Phil's mind.

Some girl was asked about her first kiss. Another was dared to steal sweets from the kitchen as though it wasn't something they already did all the time. A boy was asked if he'd ever had a crush on a teacher.

And Phil made the mistake of asking for a dare when the attention turned to him.

It was a fifth year boy with lilac hair and a dimpled smile that was staring back at him, grinning to wide for comfort. "I dare you to kiss Dan's cheek," is what he said.

Phil gasped. The rosy spot on Dan's cheek turned vibrant nearly instantly. But he was biting his lip and nodding and mumbled quiet consent under his breath. So Phil squeezed his fingers and leaned in close.

His nose nudged some of the curls that fell over Dan's ear. His breath came too quick and shallow and his mouth felt dry and he leaned forward just enough to press a soft kiss to Dan's skin.

His cheeks were warm from his blush and his eyes were closed and when Phil pulled away, he thought Dan looked absolutely beautiful.

Laughter and soft _aws_ filled the room. The blood girl who had told him to give up on Dan on their very first Day was staring.

"Are you guys together yet?" she asked.

_Soon, soon, soon,_ was all that could be heard in Phil's mind.

\---

That night, everyone had fallen asleep before Phil could calm the race of his heart and rush of his thoughts to remind him over and over and over again that he'd kissed Dan's cheek. Before the rustling of Dan's bed sheets fell silent.

Moonlight filled the dormitory and Phil peeked from his curtains to glance at Dan's bed, only to realize that Dan was staring back at him.

He drew his curtains open, wondered how long it had been since Dan ad opened his own.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah." He was smiling, his face pressed into his pillow. "I wish I was drunk."

"Why?"

There was a pause. Dan's fingers played with the hem of his duvet and Phil tried not to stare too intently.

"Because if I was there would be nothing stopping me from going over there and crawling into your bed," he whispered.

 

Phil breath stuttered. His sleep-hazy mind informed him that Dan made that happen far too often. And then he drew his bed curtains open completely, shifted to occupy only half the small mattress, and patted the space beside him.

Dan hesitated for a moment. And then climbed out of bed. He drew his own curtains shut again with a flick of his wrist and charmed them so nobody else could open them, and then walked over to Phil's bed.

He crawled under the duvet slowly, pressed himself to Phil's side and draped an arm over Phil's middle and nestled his nose against Phil's collarbone.

And Phil reached for his wand, spelled his own curtains shut and charmed them to stay that way with shaky fingers and a cloudy mind and the boy he was maybe, possibly, most likely falling in love with pressed against him.

"Goodnight," Dan whispered.

"Goodnight."

They didn't fall asleep very quickly. But Dan was still lying there, warm and cozy and adorable, when Phil's eyes did, at last, slip closed.

\---

He woke up with Dan no longer pressed to his side, but sitting at the end of his bed with a textbook spread across his thighs. He was still wearing his pyjamas and his hair was sticking up in every direction and when he saw that Phil was awake, he smiled.

"Couldn't sleep," he said. "But I didn't want you to think I ran away."

Phil smiled, too, the sleepy kind that had him rolling onto his side and nestling himself into his pillow. His toes brushed against Dan's legs through his duvet.

"Transfiguration or potions?" he mumbled.

Dan dropped his quill onto the page, reached down to squeeze Phil's ankle. "Arithmancy."

He giggled, closed his textbook, and crawled out of Phil's bed without another word.

\---

Exams came in waves of exhaustion and frantic studying and constant buzzing in the halls of nervous students. The fifth years and seventh years barely escaped their dorms and the teachers were quick to offer reminders of how important everything was and Phil hated it.

But he spent his afternoons sitting in bed with Dan pouring over textbooks and giggling and eating snacks Dan convinced the house elves to give him. They talked about potions, then animals, then transfiguration, then plants and it wasn’t calm, but a smile still spread across his face.

The first night, Dan had grabbed for his hand when Phil tried to return to his own bed.

“Stay?” he’d whispered. “I sleep better with you here.”

His cheeks had been bright red and words hesitant as though he expected Phil to say no.

“Well then, I can’t deny you good sleep during exams.”

He’d pulled on his pyjama pants and a t-shirt and charmed his bed curtains closed and crawled under Dan’s blac duvet with a smile on his face.

That night, ne’d rolled onto his side, pressed his chest to Dan’s back, held him close, and slept. The second night, Dan held him. The third, they fell asleep still in uniforms and woke up in a tangle of limbs and the blanket with sleepy smiles and messy hair and wrinkled clothes.

The anxiety of exams lingered, but Phil could tolerate it.

\---

Phil’s last exam was divination.

When it was done, he left the classroom and made his way down spiral staircases back to the dormitory. The common room was already full of people celebrating being done with the year. Someone congratulated him when he walked in. Someone else sent him a knowing smile when he rushed towards the dormitory.

It was empty when he got there. Which made sense. Dan’s last exam was transfiguration and Phil figured it could very well be longer than his fretting over tea leaves and smoke patterns had been.

But there was something hanging from the window nearest his bed that had his breath catching, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

He stepped forward, let his fingers drift along the edge of the prism, just like the one Dan had transfigured so long ago. It painted rainbows across the room in pale pastels that had a smile spreading across his face.

On the table beneath it was a piece of parchment with scrawls Dan’s neatest handwriting.

_I’m ready to hear about your crush._

Phil swiped the prism from where it hung and rushed back through the common room, ignoring the laughter that followed him.

\---

Dan was sitting under the tree when Phil got there. He had his wand out and a flower he kept transfiguring between different species in his hand. His hair was curly and his robe was sitting on the ground, folded neatly, and the rosy spot on his cheek was red again.

He looked up as Phil approached, smiled.

“Hi.”

Phil smiled back. “Hi.”

He sat down on the grass next to Dan. The flower, which had turned into a lily, was handed to him with shaking hands. He took it, smoothed a finger over the petals. The things Dan transfigured always, somehow, looked perfect.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, swallowed back his heart’s addition of _you’re beautiful._

Dan’s smile widened. He reached over, let his fingers drift over the jutting bones of Phil’s wrist, up to his knuckles. “Did you get my note?”

“Yeah.”

Dan’s breath shuddered and matched the rustle of leaves overhead. “Can you tell me about your crush?” he said.

Phil smiled. He let the lily fall onto his lap and reached for Dan’s hand instead. “Well, he has the cutest curls and most infuriating need to be an intellectual, and dimples, and gives the best cuddles,” he said. He squeezed Dan’s palm, looked up at him. “It’s been a really long time.”

Dan smiled, the shy kind that had his eyes gleaming and dimples popping. “Yeah?” he breathed. “Me too.”

“Yeah?”

And then Dan’s free hand was lifting, coasting along Phil’s cheek. He leaned forward, pressed their lips together softly and pulled away.

“You okay?” Phil asked.

Dan nodded. “Didn’t think I could ever have this.”

And he kissed Phil again, more sure this time. Warm and soft and pressing holding him close with the hand on Phil’s cheek. One kiss, and a giggle, and Phil lifted his hand to tangle his fingers in Dan’s curls. A second kiss that had Phil’s face burning and his body pressing forward. A third that had them pressing each other, hands gripping to uniforms and smiles on their faces.

When he pulled away, it was with quick breaths and a grin, his back pressed to the tree trunk and Dan kneeling in front of him.

“You okay?” Dan asked.

“Perfect,” he said, paused. “Will you go to the Feast with me?”

Dan giggled, pressed forward so his head was resting on Phil’s shoulder. “Pretty sure everyone goes to that, Phil.”

“Shut up.” He laughed, held Dan close. “I have nowhere else to take you on a date, okay?”

There was another pause. Dan pressed a kiss to Phil’s shoulder, pulled back so they could look at each other.

“Okay,” he said.

And Phil kissed him again.

\---

They did go to the Feast together.

Dan took his hand before they walked into the Great Hall. Their knees were pressed together under the table. And when Dumbledore congratulated them all on a great year, Dan pressed a kiss to the back of his head.

The banners hanging from the ceiling were red and gold.

But Dan had curly hair and robes and he was holding Phil’s hand where anyone could see.

And the tie around his neck was Hufflepuff yellow.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on tumblr @huphilpuffs!


End file.
